


Day 12: AU - Romantic Arrangement

by 221b_hound



Series: Techienician: Botanical Love [13]
Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 30 Day of Techienician, Alternative Universe - Florist, Florist Techie, M/M, Techienician, mechanic Matt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 14:01:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8016826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another time, on another world, Matt the Auto Mechanic and Muscari Astor  the Florist (who used to be in IT but  likes flowers better) flirt awkwardly while Matt buys bouquet after bouquet... but for whom?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 12: AU - Romantic Arrangement

The bell dings over the door and Muscari Astor looks across the top of the petals of the bouquet he’s arranging. And there he is again. That big, blond mountain of a man in overalls and spectacles, with an expression like he’s accidentally wandered into the wrong store and has never seen flowers before.

“Hey, Matt.”

Matt’s head jerks up and he smiles awkwardly, nods awkwardly, shuffles awkwardly up to the counter.

“Hey. Uh. Muscari. Hi.”

Muscari blinks rapidly, still half hidden behind the burst of red and white roses he’s placing artistically into florist’s putty at the base of the basket.

“They. Ah. Look. Nice.” Matt is rubbing at his nose, leaving a smear of grease.

“Yeah.”

Muscari is mentally kicking himself, because he talks to the flowers all the live long bloody day, but when Matthew Hugon comes into Astra Blue every three or four times a week, the power of speech flees and Muscari might as well be a fucking tree himself.

“So. Same again?”

“Oh. Ah. Yeah. Thanks.”

Muscari leaves the arrangement as it is, pushes his long red hair behind his ears and skittishly goes in search of the gerberas. Matt likes gerberas. He gets six gerberas every single time, sometimes with daisies, sometimes with ferns. He leaves the details to Muscari, and watches Muscari’s long, slender fingers as he puts together the bouquet.

Muscari wonders who Matt buys them for, and is jealous.

“So. Ah. How’s. Um. Business?” asks Matt.

“Oh good, you know, good. Good. I’ve ah… updated the website and. Things. Yeah.”

“You. Used to. IT and stuff. Didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Muscari laughs a bit, though it’s not apparently funny. “Real tech-head, I was. They. Um. Used to call me that. Techie. The Clan Techie. For. Um. Some people.”

Muscari doesn’t generally talk about those days. He barely got away with his life. He almost lost an eye, and he doesn’t see too well out of it anymore. The scarring around his temple and across his brow and eyelid isn’t pretty, but it still lets in some light, and the other is fine. And flowers, on the whole, are much nicer than either computers or most people.

But he likes Matt Hugon, who is big and slow-moving and slow-talking and a bit shy.

And buying flowers for someone else. Damnit.

“So. Ah. Your day?” Muscari asks in return.

“Oh. Good. Good. Fixing cars. You know.”

“You like it?”

“Oh. Oh yeah, I love it. Engines are easier to understand than people, eh?”

That is possibly the longest uninterrupted sentence Matt has ever said to Muscari.

“Yeah,” agrees Muscari with a smile.

“Flowers too, I bet,” says Matt, wringing his hands together as though he’s really anxious about something.

“Yeah. They’re nice. And they smell good.”

Though Muscari likes the smell of other things too. Like the smell of a mechanic radiating the faint scent of oil and metal and maleness.

“You smell good,” says Matt.

The world stops.

Matt stares, bug-eyed, at Muscari. Muscari stares, bug-eyed, at Matt.

“Ah….” says Matt.

“So do you,” blurts Muscari.

More bug-eyed staring occurs.

“I like your hair,” says Matt, all of a rush. “It’s like copper, only it looks silky.”

“I like yours,” says Muscari, hardly able to believe the rush of words coming out of their mouths, “Almost the same colour as _Hemerocallis 'Stella d'Oro'.”_

_“Hemer_ _… what?”_

_“Dwarf lilies.”_

_“Dwarf…?” Matt stares at Muscari, and then up and down his own hugely tall and wide form. And he grins. And he starts to laugh, a wheezy kind of giggle. “Dwarf lily.”_

_He grins bright at Muscari, and after not being able to breathe for five seconds because of his stupid_ _faux pas_ _, Muscari too starts to giggle._

“You’re really more of a sunflower,” says Muscari through the giggles, and he peeks at Matt to see how that one’s taken.

Matt stands taller and beams and opens up like a flower. “I like sunflowers.”

“Want me to put some in the bouquet?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

And now Muscari is jealous again. He tries not to let it show as he arranges the gerberas, sunflowers and fern together into something bold and lovely. He wraps the bouquet in crinkly plastic and then in soft paper. He ties a bow around it, expertly running his nail down the ribbon to make it curl.

“Here you go.”

Matt fumbles for his wallet, takes out a fifty and pays. Muscari rings it up and fetches the change, but when he goes to give it to Matt, Matt has gone.

Muscari wonders if it’s meant to be a tip, but it’s too much for a tip. And the garage where Matt works is just over the road and down on the corner.

Feeling unreasonably annoyed at Matthew Hugon for slipping out so suddenly after being so nice about his hair and how he smells, Muscari jams the change in his pocket. He locks up the shop, hangs his ‘Back in 10 minutes’ sign and makes his irritated way down to Phasma’s Finalizer Auto Repair.

He can’t see Matt on the workshop floor – a couple of mechanics are in the pit under a cherry red Chevrolet, including a wiry young woman and an incredibly tall blonde woman.

“Hand me the wrench, would you Rey?” says the incredibly tall woman.

Rey, not even looking, reaches over the lip of the pit, grabs one of three different wrenches and, still not looking, tosses it to the tall woman. The tall woman catches it and sets to work.

“Ah…”

The tall woman looks at him. She squints. She smiles. She doesn’t even flinch at the scar across his face, the way most people do.

“You’re that florist,” she says. “Matt’s florist.”

Muscari swallows. “He forgot his change.”

The tall woman just laughs at some private joke. She wipes her hands on a rag hanging out of her pocket and shouts out,

“HEY MATTIE!”

“NOT IN THE MOOD, PHASMA!” Matt sounds… a bit upset, Muscari thinks.

“AWW, DON’T BE LIKE THAT,” Phasma yells back, still obviously laughing at him.

“I AIN’T LIKE NOTHIN’.”

“YOU’RE LIKE SOMETHIN’ ALL RIGHT!” Phasma is grinning at Muscari like he’s in on the joke, which he really, really isn’t. Then she winks at Muscari. “He blushes like a fire engine, for such a big dude.”

“WHADDYA WANT?” Matt yells again.

“YOU GOTTA CLIENT! I’LL SEND HIM TO YA!” Then Phasma jerks her head towards the back of the workshop. “He’s hiding in the office.”

Muscari hasn’t the first clue what to make of her, so he keeps his hands in his pockets, nods, and shuffles off towards the indicated office.

The door is ajar. Through it, he sees Matthew Hugon, pacing. His hands are shoved in his hair and he’s muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, what is _wrong_ with you? _Idiot_.”

Muscari also sees… flowers. Gerberas everywhere. Gerberas and daisies and lilies and irises and all sorts. Some are in vases. Some are hung upside down from the ceiling, which is a common way of drying flowers for preservation. Some are pressed between volumes of automotive repair manuals. The latest bouquet of sunflowers and gerberas are in the middle of the desk.

Matt stops pacing suddenly, turns to see Muscari there in the doorway, and freezes.

“Uh.”

“You forgot your change.”

“I… did I?”

“You took the flowers and you left. Without. Um. Your change.”

“Ah.”

“Did I do something to… offend you?”

“You? Offend me? No. No. No no no no no no no no no no. I mean. No.”

“Good. Because. I thought. I thought we were. Ah.”

“Hmm. Yeah. But you. Um. Looked. Mad. At me. And I. Ah.”

Muscari looks at the flowers all around the office. “Who are they for?”

“What?”

“Who are all the flowers for?”

“Oh. Um. Not. For anybody.”

That makes no sense.

“They’re just. For. Um.” Matt snatches the latest bouquet off the desk again and thrusts them gracelessly at Muscari. “For you. I guess. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. They’re for you. I come and get them so I can see you and then I keep them but I suppose really they’re for you, which is stupid, you have lots of flowers, all over your shop, I see you working there every day, you look really good I mean pretty or not pretty but really nice and so I went in one day and you were nice to talk to, too, and so I kept going in because you’re so. Ah.”

Muscari has taken the bouquet. He is staring at Matt and thinking about the longest utterance Matt may have made in his entire life.

“My name’s a kind of flower,” Muscari admits. “Muscari. They’re perennials from Eurasia. Mum was a bit of a flower buff.”

“Mine’s just Matt,” says Matt, “I like your name.”                

“I like yours. It’s solid. Dependable. You know. Like… trees.”

Muscari would very much like to smack his head repeatedly against a wall for that bit of inanity, but… but Matt is beaming at the description. He’s grinning like that was a good thing to say.

“Wanna come with me to the park?” asks Matt.

“Yeah,” says Muscari, in a daze. “I’d like that.” When he sees Matt picking up wallet and keys, he realises, “You mean now?”

“Oh.” Matt starts to put his wallet down. “Is that okay?”

Muscari grins. He sticks his face into the bouquet and takes a bit long sniff of the flowers, his scarred eye and his good one peeking over the top at Matt. “It’d be great.”

“I’M GOING FOR LUNCH BACK IN AN HOUR, BOSS!” Matt yells to Phasma.

Muscari ignores Phasma and Rey exchanging knowing grins as he walks with Matt to the park.

*

One year later, after a dinner Matt has cooked for Muscari, they are on the hilltop overlooking the city. Holding hands. Looking up into the night sky, twinkling with distant stars just as the city below twinkles with distant street lights.

Wishing upon a falling star.

“What did you wish for?” Muscari asks after, while they are kissing each other beneath a crescent moon.

“Nothing,” says Matt, caressing Muscari’s thigh with one hand, playing with Muscari’s red hair with the other. “I don’t need anything else. Except…”

“Except?”

“That I’ll always make you happy.”

Muscari snuggles close, slender wrists jangling with the bangles Matt keeps buying him, now that he’s not constantly buying flowers. “Know what I wished?”

“Mmnnn.” Matt’s too busy kissing Muscari’s throat to let a vowel sound escape.

“Exactly the same.”

On the hilltop, under the trees, under the kind light of stars and moon, Matthew Hugon and Muscari Astor make each other happy, in body, heart and soul, for the rest of their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> In my usual stories, Techie doesn't have a name other than Techie. But this name, Muscari Astor, is the one he had before Ma-Ma took him. Perhaps one day, if he's forgotten, he'll remember and tell Matt...


End file.
